Are any of the others actually good? As much as I love Magic, I sometimes get bored of it, but I never get bored of CCG's in general, so let's post our lists and thoughts of other card games we've played, i.e. recommendations for other players.
Pokemon Trading Card Game for GameBoy - Both games feel just like Magic. There's booster packs, promo cards, in-game currency, and so forth. There's also a Pokemon equivalent of Stompy lands!
Monster Rancher for GameBoy- You basically choose three commanders and each card in your deck is an attack, defense or special card for one of those commanders. There's dungeons, too.
Infinity Wars for Windows and Mac - Take EDH and switch it where you can have three commanders, and you have Infinity Wars. Free-to-play, earn some XP and you get free boosters. It's in beta, but if anyone wants an invite just PM me.
I've played a lot of others like Yugioh (various DS games and Duelists of the Roses for PS2), Mage Knights (DS) and ShadowEra, but not too much fun there IMO.
Post the TCG's you've played!
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You like Super Smash Bros.? Melee or Brawl? Check this out! http://projectm.dantarion.com/
It's an updated version of Brawl into an epic, new game.
Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
Got into Yugioh around 2001, played competitively from 2005-2008. The game was a lot enjoyable back then than it is now. I enjoyed it a lot more than I do playing Magic currently, but that just might be from nostalgia. When I played, you were rewarded heavily for not overextending and maintaining/generating card advantage from interacting with your opponent.
Yugioh's special summoning mechanic has got to be one of the most busted mechanics in the history of any card game. It started off tamed but it's gotten dumb now.
Illuminati -- Great concept. LONG gameplay. Crappy art. No balance whatsoever.
Call of Cthulhu -- MtG variant
X-files -- very, very dull after a while since your opponent knows your deck.
Ani Mayhem -- jesus, the rules are crap to the point of incomprehensibility; ZERO balance (well, that's to be expected because you really can't mash up various animes without some getting the short end of the stick).
Battletech -- fun but broken prior to the 4x rule; more balanced but boring after 4x implemented; lousy art
Highlander -- unique concept and fairly balanced if you include The Gathering rules, but duels are ridiculously lop-sided if you don't spend major moolah to construct a "named" deck; generic immortals have zero chance of winning against a named one, which is probably fine except getting a character card is harder than getting a foil tarmogoyf, and only characters can use every good move; lousy art; NO RAMIREZ?
Initial D -- GREAT CONCEPT as it captures the feel of a race down a mountain; truly terrible art; uncommons and commons are all useless as rares are strictly better; bought a box, built a deck, KEPT LOSING ON TURN 1/2 against an all-rare deck; community is kinda bad
Initial D saddened me. The system was fantastic. We tried sealed (open 3 packs, go) and it was freaking awesome as you had to think of every move and every card was literally usable out of the box.
Constructed just stinks, though.
Capcom VS SNK Cardbattle -- FUN! balance is whack as there are tons of strictly better cards; nice/cute art
Pokemon (gameboy) -- FUN! Balance is also out of whack.
Illuminati -- Great concept. LONG gameplay. Crappy art. No balance whatsoever.
I used to play Illuminati. It was fun because, and only because, of the flavour. Gameplay was terrible. For us the competition was less in who would win the game but who would provide the most entertaining rationalisation of how it was that Bill Clinton was Taking over the Vatican with the help of the Dentists.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." -Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Most of my experimenting with other CCG's happened in the 90's:
-Rage (White Wolf's CCG based on their RPG Werewolf): Outside of Magic, I felt this was the most viable of the CCG's I had tried. But, I felt it was a bit too straightforward to really maintain interest.
-Jyhad (Later Vampire: The Eternal Struggle): I didn't play it that much, but it seemed OK.
-Redemption: "Christian" MtG. In a nutshell, each player would summon Biblical characters, and use those characters to rescue unbelievers. Biblical artifacts could give bonuses, leading to things like equipping Noah with the Staff of Moses, or some such.
-Arcadia (Based on White Wolf's RPG Changeling): I hardly remember anything about it, honestly.
-Star Trek: I never played it, just picked up some of the cards.
In all of these cases, the question in the back of my mind was "would I rather be playing MtG right now?", and usually the answer was "yes".
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EDH UBW Sharuum BR Olivia Voldaren UR Jhoira URG Riku U Vendilion Clique
Yeesh. Where do I start? Back during the original CCG boom I bought lots of starters and a few boosters of lots of games just to try them.
Star Trek: the Next Generation CCG - Interesting gameplay but ends up feeling too much like solitaire. Never got anything outside of the original edition so I'm not sure how the later expansions felt.
Champions - Absolutely amazing art. Clever concept (wargaming with cards), but rules were clunky and gameplay wasn't really fun.
Illuminati - Like others have said, the humor is better than the gameplay.
The Wheel of Time CCG - Big disappointment. I'm a big WoT fan and I was really looking forward to this one. Turns out it's basically just counters, counters, and why not throw in more counters. If you thought Fallen Empires had lots of different types of counters then you haven't played the WoT CCG.
Tomb Raider CCG - I think I bought a couple starters for a few bucks so my girlfriend (who was a big Lara Croft fan) and I could play. I don't really remember much of it which I think says something negative about it.
Netrunner - My favorite outside of Magic. Amazing and deep gameplay. So much bluffing. The new version by Fantasy Flight tightens up the rules and makes the game prettier. Highly recommended.
Doomtrooper - Interesting gameplay in a really cool universe (Mutant Chronicles). Unfortunately the art consists of recycled work from the MC books and are cropped in a circle for some reason. Really the layout is just atrocious.
Galactic Empires - I found something like 10 boxes of boosters for a $1 apiece in a discount toy store. That's one box, not starter deck. I gave boxes to my friends and we all had tons of cards but absolutely no rules. Since this was before the days of everything being online it was months before I stumbled across a rules writeup online; even then I'm not sure if they were the right rules because the game felt really awkward. I recently came across a starter deck at the local game shop that did have rules. I decided against it because I've moved and I don't know anybody else who has thousands of mint condition Galactic Empires cards.
Deadlands - Actually a really great game. Fun and wacky flavor. The poker hand mechanic for shootouts was very cool and fit into the setting perfectly.
Mortal Kombat - An obvious and cheap attempt to get in on the CCG craze. Only good thing was the distance mechanic which simulated the characters moving toward and away from each other.
Jyhad / Vampire: the Eternal Struggle - Very fun multiplayer game designed by Richard Garfield. In general, I like the flavor of this game more than I like Magic's flavor. If you can find 3 or 4 other people to play, it is a very cool game.
The drawbacks are that it gets less fun with just 2 players, it takes a very long time to play, and it suffers tremendously from complexity creep. The game is currently officially discontinued, but last I read there are efforts to bring it back to life (again). In my opinion, the system needs streamlined, simplified, and started again from scratch to be successful.
WarCry - This was a cool game based on WarHammer. The flavor is similar to Magic's, but it plays out very differently. There are two phases to the game. The first is to build your army (play creatures) and the second is to enter combat with your opponent. The two phase system is well designed to prevent being screwed over by resource flooding or shortages (no mana screw), while still being random.
Pokémon - Everybody's played this. It's pretty fun, at least on a very casual level. Some of the tournament decks seem over the top.
And yea, haven't been able to play Jyhad in years - but its an amazing group game - our game store here had 8-12 player Jyhad on many nights for a long while was such a blast.
I haven't played much, but the World of Warcraft TCG is quite enjoyable. The art is great for the most part, and the rules are close enough to Magic to be fairly intuitive to a MtG player. Would be nice to have a keyword glossary handy for the first half a dozen games or more, though. Sadly, finding people to play with where I live is next to impossible. The more recent stuff done by Cryptozoic is significantly better than the first few sets published by Upper Deck (I won't lie, the Upper Deck sets sucked).
And even though it's not really a TCG in the traditional sense, Munchkin is always a riot!
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A polite player might call my card choices "interesting." At my budget, "interesting" is the only option.
I'm really enjoying netrunner, and frequently recommend it to board game and ccg players alike.
I've also gone a bit cube crazy these past 2 years, and have made frequent attempts to shoehorn old dead ccgs into this format, as a way of getting use out of cards, and trying to sculpt them into better, more functional games. I'm currently agonizing over a Rage ccg cube, and have had a few discussions recently about working on one using the battletech system and cards. Some friends of mine have been built WoW cubes, and if I had a buttload of money, I'd love to make one for L5R (although I know very few people in my area capable of playing).
"A rich man thinks all other people are rich, and an intelligent man thinks all other people are similarly gifted. Both are always terribly shocked when they discover the truth of the world. You, my dear brother, are a pious man." - Strahd von Zarovich
A great game that's been out of print for 13+ years is Middle Earth: the Wizards. You basically took on the role of either Gandalf, Radagast, Saruman, Alatar or Pallando and marshalled forces against Sauron. Amazing game but sadly, Iron Crown Enterprises lost the license to produce the game due to the LotR movies.
You can still find decks and booster packs on Ebay last I checked, but they're starting to get pricier. But it was an awesome game, no doubt.
Pokemon Trading Card Game for GameBoy - Both games feel just like Magic. There's booster packs, promo cards, in-game currency, and so forth. There's also a Pokemon equivalent of Stompy lands!
Monster Rancher for GameBoy- You basically choose three commanders and each card in your deck is an attack, defense or special card for one of those commanders. There's dungeons, too.
Infinity Wars for Windows and Mac - Take EDH and switch it where you can have three commanders, and you have Infinity Wars. Free-to-play, earn some XP and you get free boosters. It's in beta, but if anyone wants an invite just PM me.
I've played a lot of others like Yugioh (various DS games and Duelists of the Roses for PS2), Mage Knights (DS) and ShadowEra, but not too much fun there IMO.
Post the TCG's you've played!
It's an updated version of Brawl into an epic, new game.
thanks to DNC of Heroes of the Plane Studios for the coolest sig
vintage-WBdark timesBW
legacy-BGRJund-51/60BGR
RBBob Sligh 48/60BR
GRone land belcherRG
URBTES-54/60URB
Fun deck-BBBBKobolds stormBBBB
I played some Yu Gi Oh but never really enjoyed it a ton, it just felt like rip off magic to me.
Magic really is the most balanced and well designed. When I need a break from Magic I usually play RTS games like Age of Empires etc.
BGW Junk / URB Grixis Shadow / RGB Lantern Control / WUBCBant Eldrazi
Current Legacy decks
BUG Shardless BUG / UWR Predict Miracles / RUG Canadian Thresh / WRBG 4c Loam
UB Reanimator
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
Yugioh's special summoning mechanic has got to be one of the most busted mechanics in the history of any card game. It started off tamed but it's gotten dumb now.
Call of Cthulhu -- MtG variant
X-files -- very, very dull after a while since your opponent knows your deck.
Ani Mayhem -- jesus, the rules are crap to the point of incomprehensibility; ZERO balance (well, that's to be expected because you really can't mash up various animes without some getting the short end of the stick).
Battletech -- fun but broken prior to the 4x rule; more balanced but boring after 4x implemented; lousy art
Highlander -- unique concept and fairly balanced if you include The Gathering rules, but duels are ridiculously lop-sided if you don't spend major moolah to construct a "named" deck; generic immortals have zero chance of winning against a named one, which is probably fine except getting a character card is harder than getting a foil tarmogoyf, and only characters can use every good move; lousy art; NO RAMIREZ?
Initial D -- GREAT CONCEPT as it captures the feel of a race down a mountain; truly terrible art; uncommons and commons are all useless as rares are strictly better; bought a box, built a deck, KEPT LOSING ON TURN 1/2 against an all-rare deck; community is kinda bad
Initial D saddened me. The system was fantastic. We tried sealed (open 3 packs, go) and it was freaking awesome as you had to think of every move and every card was literally usable out of the box.
Constructed just stinks, though.
Capcom VS SNK Cardbattle -- FUN! balance is whack as there are tons of strictly better cards; nice/cute art
Pokemon (gameboy) -- FUN! Balance is also out of whack.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
I used to play Illuminati. It was fun because, and only because, of the flavour. Gameplay was terrible. For us the competition was less in who would win the game but who would provide the most entertaining rationalisation of how it was that Bill Clinton was Taking over the Vatican with the help of the Dentists.
My 380 Beginners’ Cube on Cube Tutor
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." -Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Looking forward to Hex as well. Scrolls is decent, I like the tactical elements but the cardpool needs to be grown ALOT.
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
-Rage (White Wolf's CCG based on their RPG Werewolf): Outside of Magic, I felt this was the most viable of the CCG's I had tried. But, I felt it was a bit too straightforward to really maintain interest.
-Jyhad (Later Vampire: The Eternal Struggle): I didn't play it that much, but it seemed OK.
-Redemption: "Christian" MtG. In a nutshell, each player would summon Biblical characters, and use those characters to rescue unbelievers. Biblical artifacts could give bonuses, leading to things like equipping Noah with the Staff of Moses, or some such.
-Arcadia (Based on White Wolf's RPG Changeling): I hardly remember anything about it, honestly.
-Star Trek: I never played it, just picked up some of the cards.
In all of these cases, the question in the back of my mind was "would I rather be playing MtG right now?", and usually the answer was "yes".
UBW Sharuum
BR Olivia Voldaren
UR Jhoira
URG Riku
U Vendilion Clique
[card=Jace Beleren]Jace[/card] = Jace
Magic CompRules
Scry Rollover Popups for Google Chrome
The first rule of Cursecatcher is, You do not talk about Cursecatcher.
The drawbacks are that it gets less fun with just 2 players, it takes a very long time to play, and it suffers tremendously from complexity creep. The game is currently officially discontinued, but last I read there are efforts to bring it back to life (again). In my opinion, the system needs streamlined, simplified, and started again from scratch to be successful.
WarCry - This was a cool game based on WarHammer. The flavor is similar to Magic's, but it plays out very differently. There are two phases to the game. The first is to build your army (play creatures) and the second is to enter combat with your opponent. The two phase system is well designed to prevent being screwed over by resource flooding or shortages (no mana screw), while still being random.
Pokémon - Everybody's played this. It's pretty fun, at least on a very casual level. Some of the tournament decks seem over the top.
NetRunner is another fabulously designed game by Wizards. Fast, fun and flavorful.
On The Edge was very surreal, gritty and fun.
Pokemon - A Simple Classic
[Clan Flamingo]
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
And even though it's not really a TCG in the traditional sense, Munchkin is always a riot!
I've also gone a bit cube crazy these past 2 years, and have made frequent attempts to shoehorn old dead ccgs into this format, as a way of getting use out of cards, and trying to sculpt them into better, more functional games. I'm currently agonizing over a Rage ccg cube, and have had a few discussions recently about working on one using the battletech system and cards. Some friends of mine have been built WoW cubes, and if I had a buttload of money, I'd love to make one for L5R (although I know very few people in my area capable of playing).
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
Magic: The Gathering [*****]
Legend of the Five Rings [****]
Deadlands: Doomtown [****]
Capcom vs. SNK card battle (NGPC) [****]
Monster Rancher Card Battle (PS1) [****]
Cardfight Vanguard [****]
Weiß Schwarz [****]
Pokemon TCG [***]
Duel Masters (PS2) [***]
7th Sea [**]
Monster Rancher Card Battle (Gameboy)
Animayhem
I've played a bunch of non-TCGs too, but I guess that's not relevant...
Pokemon: Played as a kid. Was the push that made me look into other card games.
BRGProssh, Skyraider of KherBRG
BWRAlesha, Who Smiles at DeathBWR
BGVarolz, the Scar-StripedBG
You can still find decks and booster packs on Ebay last I checked, but they're starting to get pricier. But it was an awesome game, no doubt.
Reminds me of a project I wanted to get involved in....
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.